Montana family pushes on despite Russian adoption ban

Jan. 6, 2013
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Jodi and Adam Huhn hold Joshua at an orphanage outside Moscow in October 2012. The Huhns are in limbo on whether they will be able to adopt Joshua from Russia in the wake of a new law banning all U.S. adoptions of Russian children. / Gannett

by David Murray, Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune

by David Murray, Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune

Joshua, as they know him, was set to join the Huhns' four other children - including the second-oldest daughter Molly who was born with Down syndrome - in their home overlooking the Sun River Valley in Montana.

On Tuesday, Adam and Jodi will leave on their second trip to Moscow to visit Joshua. Less than a month ago, the couple believed this journey would include a hearing before a Russian judge to finalize their adoption of the 3-year-old. After that, the Huhns would have been forced to leave Joshua behind one final time, before returning after a mandatory 30-day waiting period to bring Joshua home as the newest member of their family.

With the stroke of a pen, all those plans were thrown into uncertainty.

On Dec. 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a ban on all U.S. adoptions of Russian orphans. The action is widely seen as retaliation for U.S. legislation sanctioning certain Russian officials for human rights abuses. At this point, even the U.S. State Department is uncertain of the full implications of the U.S. adoption ban.

"At this time the Russian government has provided no details on how Russian Federal Law No. 186614-6 will be implemented," a State Department news release states. "The Department of State has no information on whether the Russian government intends to permit the completion of any pending adoptions."

The Huhns, like hundreds of other families nationwide, have suddenly been left not knowing what more to expect, or whether their efforts to adopt a Russian child are in vain.

"What do we do?" Adam Huhn asked the Russian adoption organization. "Do we cancel our flight? Do we just go and find out what we can in the country?"

"They said, 'Feel free to come and risk it,' " Jodi Huhn recalled. "The Russian adoption organization is at risk even talking to us. Right now it's against the law for them to even advise us. So we can come, and we can go to our hotel and wait to see if something happens."

The Huhns have already decided to take their chances and head to Moscow in anticipation of their previously scheduled Thursday hearing. They will do so with no assurances that the Russian court will even agree to meet with them, or that there is any chance at all of continuing the adoption process.

"If there's even a one in a million chance, we're going for it," Jodi Huhn said. "I think that's our thought right now, and if they close the door on us and it doesn't reopen for another five years, we'll go back for him - because we know he'll probably still be there."

Abandoned to state

The Huhns' decision to pursue a foreign adoption was based to a large degree upon their knowledge of the disadvantages faced by special needs children in other parts of the world.

"After we had Molly, it came up that in a lot of countries, kids with Down syndrome basically just got put in an orphanage," Jodi Huhn said.

"There's no opportunity for them to thrive like they have here - there's no early intervention," Adam Huhn said. "They're placed into an orphanage and then moved on to a group home. They're not given a chance to integrate into society like they are in the United States. That's why we chose another country, and it just happened to be Russia."

The number of parentless children and the condition of Russia's orphanages has long been an international scandal. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates there are about 600,000 abandoned children in Russia. Many were born with a handicap or into families who cannot support them financially.

Compounding the problem have been long-standing cultural prejudices in Russia against adoption, and a lack of state support for institutions to care for these children. A 1998 report by the international human rights group Human Rights Watch found that from the moment the state assumed responsibility for their care, many Russian orphans were subjected to "shocking levels of cruelty and neglect."

The Huhns say they were cautious about immediately becoming emotionally bonded to Joshua.

Still, through Thanksgiving, things seemed to be going remarkably well. Then, world events far beyond the Huhns' control conspired to derail their adoption plans.

Adoption diplomacy

Russia has been a major source for foreign adoptions to the United States for more than 20 years. According to the U.S. State Department, since 1991 roughly 60,000 Russian children have been adopted by American families. Only China had more adoptions by U.S. families.

However, in recent years, those adoption trends have come under increasing public criticism in Russia. Tensions over the exodus of Russian children were focused even more sharply by two high-profile abuse cases involving American adoptions.

In July 2008, a Russian toddler died of heat stroke in the Washington, D.C., area after his American adopted father, Miles Harrison, left him unattended and strapped into his car for nine hours. The Russian public was outraged when Harrison was acquitted of manslaughter in 2009.

Tensions were further inflamed in April 2010, when a Tennessee adoptive mother, Torry Hansen, sent her 7-year-old Russian son back to Moscow alone on a one-way flight with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems.

In response, Russian officials threatened to ban adoptions of Russian children by Americans. Things were smoothed over in July 2011, when Russia and the United States both signed a Bilateral Adoption Agreement to safeguard the adoptions process between the two countries. Those advances were upended by unrelated events involving the action of a Russian whistle-blower.

As reported by Time magazine, in 2008 a Russian lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky disclosed his discovery that Russian officials were implicated in the theft of $230 million from the Russian treasury. Magnitsky was arrested and died a year later after having reportedly been severely beaten in a Russian prison and denied medical treatment. A prison doctor was the only person to face criminal charges in connection with Magnitsky's death. He has recently been acquitted of any wrongdoing.

In response, the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed an act banning implicated Russian officials from traveling to the United States, owning property in the U.S. or holding U.S. bank accounts. President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act into law Dec. 14.

Official Russian response was swift. Putin called the act "unfriendly" and vowed it would receive an "adequate" response from Russian lawmakers. Less than a week after Putin's statement, Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, voted 400 to 4 to ban any further U.S. adoptions of Russian children.

The Huhns still hold out hope that because Joshua is a handicapped child, Russian authorities may be more willing to continue through with his adoption. One member of the Russian parliament has already proposed an amendment that would create an exception to the ban for children with disabilities.

"We're not giving up hope because there still is that chance the amendment will pass and we'll be able to proceed," Adam Huhn said.